This poll comes from the "DVD Companion...when?" in the Technical support forum.

Since IMDB is not allowed as i the rules as a source. (And it is often wrong, and I believe it is illegal to scrap info from there due to licensing.)
Why do we still allow it as a secondary source?
I am all for not allowing even a 100% correct submission that use IMDB as a site.

Maybe I am just getting grumpy in my old age, but as Peter Griffin once said, "This really grinds my gears!"

Bobb

IMDb is not the problem. It's the use of any single third party as a source. It doesn't matter which one it is.

It would be just as wrong to use TCM, BFI, or Allmovie as your single source.

If more than one site is consulted as part of your research and they agree, you can reference them in your documentation.

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Quoting T!M:

Quote:
When you're trying to document something, any third party database can be used as a reference, as long as you provide more than one.

[...]
and as long as you make sure that your references are not crossreferencing each other! (this would in most cases exclude the combination of IMDB and Wikipedia)

Oh how I love it to repeat myself.

Quoting bobb:

Quote:
still against the rules?

Again, the rules only prohibit "mining" of data - from any third party database, that is. Using any of them as a reference is absolutely fine, as long as you use more than one source.

I'm always slighty surprised to see people accusing certain sites as being "often wrong" - I've found them ALL to contain similar amounts of "errors", and that's mostly because different sites use different standards. None of them uses the exact same set of "contribution rules" that we do, and as such, their data will be different than what we need. For instance: we (still!) don't have a standard for how to enter suffixed names, resulting in separate, non-linking entries for, let's say, Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Downey, Jr. which remain pretty hard to link together because the community remains divided on which is the "correct" variant. You'll find that almost all third party databases HAVE set a standard for this. In my book, that doesn't make them "wrong" - it's just that they use different standards than we do.

As a sole reference, I would NEVER EVER use IMDb nor any other third party datasource, I always use a MINIMUM of two independent sources.

Skip

Personally, I've found IMDB useful for one thing and that is role names.  Its not at all uncommon for a cast list to be given without roles, particularly on older films.  I still tend to bounce off of a couple of sites for these as IMDB has a penchant for ridiculously long roles (Mr. Jones, the guy standing next to the candy counter).

EDIT - cmaeditor beat me to it.  Darn, missed it by that much.

Becareful using IMDB for role names, I have found mistakes in roles names, espically in TV series where an actor may play a different role in the series.  Yet IMDB will have the same role name listed for the every episode the actor played in.  I found getting role names from the closed captions or subtitles more reliable than IMDB when a role isn't provided in the credits.